August 15, 2007

There are two things that "always" happen to me when I fly to DC. I "always" (often, rather) sit next to MI's Republican Congressmen in First Class. And I "always" (almost always, probably) get pulled into secondary when I'm flying out of Reagan National Airport. I know why the latter occurs: my driver's license says, "Margaret" while my Northwest frequent flier number is under the name "Marcy," so they have to pull me into secondary to quiz me about my family's weird nicknaming habits.

But the day after the Libby sentencing, I got the full-fledged treatment, including what I believe to be behavior detection.

Specially trained security personnel are watching body language and
facial cues of passengers for signs of bad intentions. The watcher
could be the attendant who hands you the tray for your laptop or the
one standing behind the ticket-checker. Or the one next to the curbside
baggage attendant.

They're
called Behavior Detection Officers, and they're part of several recent
security upgrades, Transportation Security Administrator Kip Hawley
told an aviation industry group in Washington last month. He described
them as "a wonderful tool to be able to identify and do risk management
prior to somebody coming into the airport or approaching the crowded
checkpoint."

[snip]

At the heart of the new screening system
is a theory that when people try to conceal their emotions, they reveal
their feelings in flashes that Ekman, a pioneer in the field, calls
"micro-expressions." Fear and disgust are the key ones, he said,
because they're associated with deception.

Behavior detection
officers work in pairs. Typically, one officer sizes up passengers
openly while the other seems to be performing a routine security duty.
A passenger who arouses suspicion, whether by micro-expressions, social
interaction or body language gets subtle but more serious scrutiny.

A
behavior specialist may decide to move in to help the suspicious
passenger recover belongings that have passed through the baggage
X-ray. Or he may ask where the traveler's going. If more alarms go off,
officers will "refer" the person to law enforcement officials for
further questioning.

It worked like this: rather than mark my boarding pass for the "quiz about family's weird nicknaming habits" treatment, they put a big red X on it. A fellow who was clearly either supervising or waiting for some liberal schmo like me then met me after the metal detector and asked to search my bags. Which he did. So thoroughly that he read every single business card in my knapsack. Every single one.

Meanwhile, a female TSA employee made like she was making small talk with me, asking why I was in DC, whether Libby was really guilty, what it was like to cover the trial, and so on. I could tell her job was, at least partly, to see whether my story accorded with the contents the male TSA guy was finding in my bag--but she was also, clearly, giving me some kind of psychological profile.

I must have passed with flying (punny!) colors, because after about 15 minutes they let me go on my way. They almost got me though. Somehow, the male TSA guy identified that my AnatomyofDeceit business cards were for a book (this is the part I find most suspicious, since I didn't actually have any copies of the book on me--how did he know the card was for a book and not, say, a movie?). So he asked me how well the book was selling. "Heck if I know," I responded, answering the same way I always have. Which didn't sound too credible to the TSA guy, pretty clearly.

Will, if I get arrested because I don't know how many books have sold, I'll be cross!!!!

The United States has decided to designate Iran's
Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country's 125,000-strong elite military
branch, as a "specially designated global terrorist," according to U.S.
officials, a move that allows Washington to target the group's business
operations and finances.

[...]

The designation of the Revolutionary Guard will be made under Executive Order 13224, which President Bush
signed two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to obstruct
terrorist funding. It authorizes the United States to identify
individuals, businesses, charities and extremist groups engaged in
terrorist activities. The Revolutionary Guard would be the first
national military branch included on the list, U.S. officials said -- a
highly unusual move because it is part of a government, rather than a
typical non-state terrorist organization.

Did you catch that last part? The United States is declaring a branch of another country's military to be terrorists. Which, I suppose, would shoehorn an attack on them into the AUMF (not that the "administration" ever believed such authorization was necessary).

August 11, 2007

If you haven't already, go read Jane Mayer's article on our methods of torture. The short version: we're using psychological methods to impose "learned helplessness" and dependency, and as a result, we're getting some intelligence, a whole lot of garbage, and we're turning our own interrogators into moral zombies.

I wanted to focus on one aspect of the calculated humiliation she describes:

A former member of a C.I.A. transport team has described the “takeout”
of prisoners as a carefully choreographed twenty-minute routine, during
which a suspect was hog-tied, stripped naked, photographed, hooded,
sedated with anal suppositories, placed in diapers, and transported by
plane to a secret location.

[snip]

The interrogation became a process not just of getting information but
of utterly subordinating the detainee through humiliation.” The former
C.I.A. officer confirmed that the agency frequently photographed the
prisoners naked, “because it’s demoralizing.” The person involved in
the Council of Europe inquiry said that photos were also part of the
C.I.A.’s quality-control process. They were passed back to case
officers for review. [my emphasis]

Part of the very calculating treatment we give these detainees is photographing them, both to humiliate them and for "quality-control." (Quality control of what? Is this like glorified meat inspection?)

I wanted to call attention to these passages because of the dust-up between the Administration and the ACLU last December. Here's a series of posts I did tracking the dust-up:

The Administration tries to force the ACLU to return a classified document pertaining to torture

The Administration wants the document back because it shows how its torture policy changed in December 2005

The Administration declassifies the document rather than risking a court decision against it on classified issues;the document describes a change in the official policy on photographing detainees

Click through to the last link for a history of our changing official policy on photographing detainees.

I raise this dust-up for two reasons. First, to show how the calculating process of using photos (and other humiliation) to dehumanize detainees has a parallel in the calculating process of legally codifying that practice. But also to call attention to the way this exacting process of photographing detainees for "quality-control" purposes can backfire.

BushCo's attempts to get its photographing policy returned closely followed the ACLU's attempts to get photographs of the detainees it was representing. Somewhere, there's a a collection of photos of the ways and people we've dehumanized.

U.S.
military intelligence officials are urgently assessing how secure
Pakistan's nuclear weapons would be in the event President Gen. Pervez
Musharraf were replaced as the nation's leader, CNN has learned.

Key questions in the assessment include who would control Pakistan's nuclear weapons after a shift in power.

[snip]

The United States has full knowledge about the location of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, according to the U.S. assessment.

But
the key questions, officials say, are what would happen and who would
control the weapons in the hours after any change in government in case
Musharraf were killed or overthrown.

Musharraf controls the
loyalty of the commanders and senior officials in charge of the nuclear
program, but those loyalties could shift at any point, officials say.

The
United States is not certain who might start controlling nuclear launch
codes and weapons if that shift in power were to happen.

There is
also a growing understanding according to the U.S. analysis that
Musharraf's control over the military remains limited to certain top
commanders and units, raising worries about whether he can maintain
control over the long term.

Well, of course, Holden. They've been otherwise occupied. Up until the end of June, after all, they were very busy looking for Iraq's WMDs.

Though, for a less snarky look at this issue, Arms Control Wonk discusses the difference between knowing where the nukes are and what will happen to them if anything should happen to Musharraf.

August 03, 2007

Here's a new thread for discussion of FISA revisions and other news of the day. I'm going off-line soon, so I hope EW or someone can pick up posting soon.

Spencer Ackerman reports that Director of National Intelligence McConnell has written Congress that they could accept a solution that provides for court approval of a wiretap after it has begun. No word on disclosures of the past program, or sunset provisions for this minor change.

HuffPost reports that the review would happen 120 days after surveillance begins--plenty of time for mischief there. And there are other conditions the Dems find unacceptable. The article also reports Bush tells Congress that they can't recess until they give him what he wants. Earth to Bush: That's not your decision, although I'd like to see them stay in session at least a couple more weeks.

Meanwhile, Def Sec Gates reports from the Gulf that he forsees little political progress in Iraq, although the military situation seems to be improving. In other words, the surge did not make political compromise more likely because he has just discovered that the depth of animosity among the factions in Iraq was worse than they expected. Hello! This is sure to make the GOPers feel very queasy before they give Bush their votes come September.

What's on your mind?

Update:

Spencer Ackerman now reports that the conpromise may throw probable cause off the sleigh. Whaaaaa? This isn't getting any better. Dems seem not to be holding here. Check TPMM for more updates. This doesn't look good at all.

August 02, 2007

This is Emptywheel's bailiwick, but she's travelling, so I'll try to fill a little of the void to give folks a place to discuss the issues. TPM Muckraker has a good rundown on the issues involved in the Bush/Cheney regime's demand for a quick fix of FISA. In brief, the FISA court has evidently restricted the ability of the National Security Agency to collect information on multiple surveillance targets under a single warrant and won't allow the NSA to collect intelligence on persons where it is not known whether they are inside or outside the U.S. Bush/Cheney wants the Attorney General to replace the FISA court in making the necessary determination. No chance of that, says Leahy. The Dem proposal is here. Other key issues are:

Carve-Outs vs. Safeguards. What the Bush administration wants -- and probably has done over the past six years -- is to remove FISA protections from a broad swath of people in the U.S. in order to look for terrorism connections. That has had, and will have, broad implications for what the U.S. intelligence community can collect in terms of domestic communications.

The Dems' idea is to keep the FISA court. Rockefeller wants a 6 month fix--Feingold wants 90 days--after which Bush/Cheney would have to come back to Congress. But under Rockefeller's proposal, per TPMM,

after 60 days of surveillance, the administration would have to inform Congress and the FISA Court exactly who has had their communications intercepted. And if the administration believes there's a "significant" pattern of communication between someone in the U.S. and a foreign-based surveillance target, it has to acquire a specific warrant from the FISA Court or end the surveillance.

Other issues:

The Definition of "Significant." So far, the bill allows the Justice Department to issue guidelines defining what qualifies as a "significant" amount of communication between someone in the U.S. and a foreign surveillance target. After six months pass, according to Rockefeller's proposal, the administration -- presumably through the Justice Department, but it's not clear -- would submit a detailed report on how the authorization has worked, including on the definition of "significant," for congressional review, in time for the "sunset" provision ending the temporary fix.

Can the Government "Sit" on a Wire? "Sitting on a wire" is a shorthand way of referring to the NSA demanding, under FISA authority, all the available communications data from a telecom company relative to a given surveillance target, and then unilaterally determining what it needs. . . . It's not clear yet whether, in whatever bill emerges, the NSA or the telecommunications companies will have the responsibility for sorting through the material relevant to the warrant.

Will Telecom Companies Have Immunity from Prosecution? According to the Wall Street Journal, the compromise under negotiation ducks the question. If so, it means that, at least so far, the telecoms don't have any legal immunity for improperly turning over more information about subscribers to the government than the government is entitled to.

Nor should they--keep this one out of the bill. And finally, the big one:

Disclosing Past Abuses. This has been a sticking point between Democrats and the administration since Alberto Gonzales proposed amending FISA in the spring. The proposal under consideration doesn't include notification of the extent of the surveillance that has occurred since "Program X" began in October 2001.

I'm no expert, or even a lawyer any more, but this seems like a no-brainer. How can Congress correct abuses of it doesn't even know what happened in the past? At an absolute minimum, the entirety of the program that existed PRIOR to the hospital visit of Card, Ginzales, Comey et al needs to be disclosed fully to Congress and, since it allegedly is no longer in operation, to the American people, before Bush/Cheney get their fix. Of course the Dems are afraid that if a terror attack comes before they authorize what Bush/Cheney wants, they will be blamed. But they will be blamed anyway; that is SOP for the Rovians.

"We've never wrestled with the question of constructing privacy safeguards for U.S. citizens that are subject to massive surveillance by a U.S. surveillance agency. Sen. Frank Church's nightmare was that U.S. intelligence capabilities for surveillance would be turned on the American people. The thin black line on that issue turns out to be the FISA court -- the only form of intervention between power of the intelligence community and American citizens."

Let's strengthen, not obliterate, that line. Spencer Ackerman has more on "Program X" here.

Given all the stories about the conflicts of interest in the Bush DOJ, the Chiquita story is real cause for concern. Chiquita just settled with DOJ, agreeing to pay a $25 million fine over five years--not exactly a punishment that will dent its profits. Yet Chiquita first admitted paying off terrorists in 2000, and DOJ prosecutors were trying to bring charges in 2004. So how did Chiquita get off with a fine three years later? Well, political appointee David Nahmias (who is now the USA in Atlanta--though he was approved via the quaint Senate approval channel) intervened:

One good thing about the spectacular abuse of intelligence to get us into the Iraq war: the intelligence community is acquiring a habit of releasing key judgments from its NIEs (I understand we'll get an Iraq NIE in time for September's moving of the goal posts). And when I read the claim yesterday that half the content of last week's NIE on terrorism came from detainee interrogations ...

According to one senior intelligence official, nearly half of the
source material used in the recent National Intelligence Estimate on
the terrorism threat to the United States came from C.I.A.
interrogations of detainees.

... I decided it would be useful to compare this most recent NIE with the NIE on terror produced in April 2006 and released in late September 2006. After all, the NIEs have been produced in fairly quick succession. But the NIEs were produced under different Directors of National Intelligence (Death Squads Negroponte for the last one, and Mike McConnell for this one) and under different majority parties. The previous NIE, unlike this most recent one, may have relied on intelligence gathered using torture. And the previous one was only declassified after it was leaked that the NIE contradicted public statements from the Administration; whereas this one was developed with the understanding an unclassified version would be released

July 21, 2007

It's really tough sorting out the new Executive Order on torture. But after a whole day of pondering the details, I think I'm finally getting it. It's yet another Bush signing statement, this time to record his own personal interpretation of the Geneva Convention. After all--that's where this new EO came from: after SCOTUS, in Hamdan, told Bush that all detainees were covered by the Geneva Convention, after Congress, with the Military Commissions Act, told Bush he could shred concepts like habeas corpus but only if he had documentation for doing so, he was forced to write this new EO.

Bush's executive order laid out broad guidelines for how the CIA
must treat detainees in its secret overseas prisons, where the
administration has held some suspects without giving them access to the
Red Cross. The document prohibits a range of abuses, including
"intentionally causing serious bodily injury" and "forcing the
individual to perform sexual acts," as well as mistreating the Koran.

The
order also said the CIA director must personally approve the use of
extraordinary interrogation practices against any specific detainee.
Detainees must also receive "adequate food and water, shelter from the
elements, necessary clothing, protection from extremes of heat and
cold, and essential medical care," it said.

But most of the
president's executive order is written in generalities, leaving
unanswered whether the CIA will be free to subject prisoners to a range
of specific techniques it has reportedly used in the past, including
long-term sleep disruption, prolonged shackling in painful stress
positions, or "waterboarding," a technique that produces the sensation
of drowning.

That is, some of the most obvious abuses--using sex and religion--are now forbidden. But the key information, what remains permitted, is in a separate, classified list that we don't get to see. And three other key details: the Executive Order explicitly denies any legal responsibilities associated with the EO, so even if some overzealous torturer ignores it, he's not going to jail. The Red Cross remains unable to monitor prisoners in this newfangled "enhanced interrogation" program. And Congress still doesn't have a copy of the DOJ opinion on the program. For that matter, Karen DeYoung reports that the Administration hasn't responded to Congress' other questions, either.

They said the administration has not responded to the questions they
asked during a recent briefing on the new order and the detainee
program.

Mind you, this is the DOJ review that Congress mandated as part of the Military Commissions Act. But I guess that's classified too.

July 12, 2007

Yesterday we were alerted by an intelligence briefing that Al Qaeda has basically reconstituted itself to its pre-2001 strength and has training camps and safe havens in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Laura Rozen summarizes:

Intelligence community seeing more signs Al Qaeda is regrouping, able to train, and communicate in Pakistan (also of Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan) . . . The new threat assessment, "Al Qaeda Better Positioned to Strike the West," will be briefed to the White House today.

Yet this morning Bush, in a rambling, often incoherent press conference, kept justifying continuing the escalation in Iraq as necessary to prevent "the people who attacked us on 9/11" from attacking here. Although journalists did call him on this, forcing him to acknowledge aqt least that the people who actually attacked us on 9/11 were all dead, he still harped on al Qaeda in Iraq, who, he claimed, had sworn fealty to Osama bin Laden (remember him?). None of the journalists raised the issue of finding bin Laden, or of Pakistan, that country that not only harbors the very same al Qaeda command who did order the 9/11 attack, and which has functional nuclear weapons and a delivery system. At least none had when I finally turned the TV off in disgust.

As Laura points out, the similarities to 1999 and 2000 are eerie. Yet Bush is so caught in his fantasy of creating a functioning democracy in Iraq before he leaves office, one that will vindicate his disasterous decision to invade Iraq instead of finisiing the job in Afghanistan and finding bin Laden, that he cannot see what is in front of his face. He and his regime are using the threat of more attacks in the US to justify staying in Iraq, rather than redeploying forces to better deal with actual threats to the US.

The delusional Bush, and his ignorant, crackpot advisers and mistaken priorities are hazardous to the health of our Nation. The whole performance was frightening, and should motivate Congress to force vote after vote, or keep the Senate in session during August until there is a vote on the substance of the Levin-Reed and Feingold-Reid amendments to the Defense Authorization bill and Bush begins to be reined in. This effort can proceede simultaneously with the enforcement of contempt against Harriet Miers and the impeachment of Gonzales as outlined in previous posts here. But things cannot just muddle on as they are; our survival as a democracy depends on making serious changes, the sooner the better.